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TORONTO –
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi conveyed robust issues about protests in Canada towards India to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi, in accordance an announcement by India.
New Delhi has been lengthy delicate to Sikh protesters in Canada. In June, India criticized Canada for permitting a float in a parade depicting the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, perceived to be glorification of violence by Sikh separatists.
“They’re selling secessionism and inciting violence towards Indian diplomats, damaging diplomatic premises and threatening the Indian group in Canada and their locations of worship,” the Indian assertion mentioned.
Relations between India and Canada stay tense, and Ottawa this month paused talks on a proposed commerce treaty with India, simply three months after the 2 nations mentioned they aimed to seal an preliminary settlement this yr. Modi, who held bilateral conferences with many world leaders throughout the G20 summit, didn’t maintain one with Trudeau.
Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by two Sikh bodyguards after she allowed the storming of the holiest Sikh temple in northern India, aiming to flush out Sikh separatists who demanded an impartial homeland to be referred to as Khalistan.
Canada has the very best inhabitants of Sikhs exterior their residence state of Punjab in India, and the nation has been the location of many protests which have irked India.
Canada will all the time defend “freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and peaceable protest,” Trudeau mentioned at a press convention in New Delhi.
“Concurrently we’re all the time there to stop violence, to push again towards hatred,” he mentioned, including that the actions of the few “don’t symbolize all the group or Canada.”
Trudeau’s departure from the G20 summit was delayed on Sunday by a technical drawback with the Canadian delegation’s plane, an announcement from the prime minister’s workplace mentioned. The delegation will keep in India till alternate preparations are made, it added.
(Reporting by Fergal Smith; Enhancing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman)
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